Agony at the Tower
by Amaranthe Athenais
Summary: This is a long oneshot about Anne Boleyn's thoughts at the Tower of London, on the night before her planned execution. Anne thinks about her life and her love for Henry. This is an angst story.


_This is a long one-shot about Anne Boleyn's thoughts at the Tower of London, on the night before her execution. Anne thinks about her life. She remembers Henry and her love for him. She thinks about Elizabeth, the only pure thing out of love for her and their great romance. _

_Actually, it is based on the first two chapters of my long epic "Anne Boleyn: life-death-rebirth". As we know, Anne doesn't die and her execution is delayed; later she is saved by Henry Percy and her father._

_Undoubtedly, I don't own any characters and the show. _

_Hope you will truly enjoy this one-shot._

_If you choose to write a review, I will be very grateful for that. I am very interested in your feedback. Thank you very much in advance._

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><p><strong>Agony at the Tower<strong>

It was the last night before Anne's execution that was scheduled for tomorrow's morning. She was doomed to die tomorrow. She was destined to be killed at the order of the man who tore apart England for her, whom she loved with all her heart, and who was killing her in the very end.

She had a brutal battle with King Henry, the Seymours, the court, the common people, and the whole kingdom. Everyone conspired against her and the whole world wished her to die, and she was defeated in the final round of the game.

The night was sleepless, and Anne was trying to sort out her thoughts and silently preparing to die. She remembered her early youth: her happy childhood at Hever Castle with Mary, George, her mother Elizabeth and her father Thomas. At that time, her relations with her father were very caring, a pure relationship of a father and a daughter; but it was a long time ago, and now everything was different. Anne remembered the years she spent at the court of Archduchess Margaret von Habsburg, Princess of Asturias and Duchess of Savoy by her two marriages, and the Governor of the Habsburg Netherlands.

At Thomas Boleyn's request, Archduchess Margaret agreed to take Anne, the small girl at that time, as one of her eighteen _filles d'honneur_ in 1513. Margaret immediately put Anne to study under a French tutor in order to learn French and to master sophistication of the court life. Anne liked to be on the side of Archduchess Margaret, making herself useful to her on every possible occasion. She was eager to share in the intimate society of the court and to join various kinds of the court entertainment. In the Low Countries, she plunged into the whirl of elaborate dances, festivities, tournaments, and hunting.

Although Anne liked her time in Netherlands, she loved much more the happy time she spent at the French court where she became a lady-in-waiting for Queen Claude of France, King François I's young wife. Anne was still very young when she was brought to the French court, but many events firmly embedded into her memory forever because those years were the golden years of her early youth. Anne Boleyn stayed with Queen Claude for nearly seven years, during which she spent the majority of time in the Upper Loire at Amboise and at Blois where the Queen of France usually resided. At the French court, Anne continued to live in the sophisticated atmosphere of the Renaissance intelligence and splendor around her, finding it more elaborate, more enchanting, and deeper as compared to Archduchess Margaret's court. Although Anne's countrymen boasted of their achievements, England still didn't have the greatness of the intellectual Renaissance environment which the Low Countries and France had in abundance, and at the French court young Anne understood that.

In France, Anne acquired excellent knowledge of the Renaissance culture and the court etiquette, embracing French coquetry and infamous French courtesy. She also completed her study of French and cultivated interests in fashion, religious philosophy, art, poetry, and literature. Anne developed her musical outstanding ability as she knew perfectly how to sing, to play the lute and other musical instruments. If she was an Amboise with the Queen, Anne often saw Leonardo da Vinci who came to settle at Cloux, a place just outside Amboise, in 1516 at the invitation of King François; after she left France for England, she frequently thought that it was a huge mistake that she didn't try to become closer with Leonardo who was the man of the greatest intelligence and intellect.

Although life with Queen Claude was much less public as the Queen of France spent much time in seclusion during her annual pregnancies, Anne still had contact with the French courtiers and spent some time at festivities and tournaments. With great pleasure, Anne remembered her conversations with King François I's sister, Marguerite d'Angoulême, at that time Duchess d'Alençon and at present the Queen of Navarre, who was a patron of humanists and reformers and a talented author in her own right. The supporter of religious reform, Marguerite encouraged a multitude of discussions on religious topics in her entourage, and Anne was an active participant and was much influenced by that chatting.

Anne stretched her legs across the bed, feeling that her body stiffened from being in the same pose for a long time. She blinked and swallowed hard, suppressing the slight sobs rising in her low throat.

Her memory reproduced the moment of her life when King Henry fell in love with her and she fell in love with him over time, their long and romantic courtship, and Henry's countless love professions and oaths. Anne smiled as she remembered Elizabeth's birth, but then the smile vanished from her face as Henry's disappointment with the birth of the healthy daughter came to her mind.

She recalled her two miscarriages, and the circumstances of her second miscarriage flashed in her mind. She thought that even after her death she would never forget the pool of hot red blood on her white nightgown and the reprobative, cruel gaze of Henry's aquamarine eyes when later he came to the Queen's suite and accused her of losing their son.

A new tide of pain transfixed her heart, and Anne felt that tears were streaming down her pale cheeks. She automatically brushed them away with her palm. She felt as though the metallic chains had been encircled around her bosom and her hands, which made her cringe in pain.

Anne had a plenty of good and bad memories about Henry, and every thought about their past was painful and distressful, tragic and tantalizing, making her heart skip a beat as the images of Henry and herself replayed in her mind. Reminiscing her past was as hard as iron for her agonizing soul. She remembered how her great romance began and how everything ended: it began in heave and ended in tatters as she was removed from paradise and thrown to hell with no way back to paradise.

When Anne recalled how tender, caring, and loving Henry was to her in the past, her heart almost collapsed in explosion from pain and heartache. It was astounding, but Anne still couldn't understand how Henry could have been so tender and co caring one time and then so cruel and so indifferent to the same person next moment. Was cruelty always hidden in his heart? Was it the absolute power that corrupted Henry and changed his character so much? Was it Anne's fault that Henry became a heartless, cruel man even to people who truly loved him?

Anne knew that she pushed Henry, directly and indirectly, to change England in so many ways and to change their lives for her own sake and for the sake of her family, and those things gave Henry the sweet taste of absolute power which no other English King had ever had before. The absolute power transformed the man she loved from the caring, loving man to the cool-blooded, empty-hearted tyrant.

At first, Anne didn't love King Henry, and it was only a matter of helping her family to receive some gains and benefits from the King of England. When her father Thomas Boleyn told Anne to attract the King's attention, she set herself in the King's way. It was a kind of game for Anne, who was a beautiful, enigmatic, alluring seductress, worshiping love and passion as much as the French did.

Anne was astounded how quickly Henry fell for her and began to make clear hints what he wanted from her – to become a royal mistress. She wasn't a stupid girl and didn't want to just become his lover who would surely be supplanted by another mistress as soon as the King was tired of her. Thus, Anne denied Henry what he wanted, and she fiercely repudiated his proposal to become his official _maîtresse en titre_, the only woman in the royal bed. While Anne denied him, she also hinted at what he could have, never giving it to him. She was playing in her own game and in the game of her family, but it was so only in the beginning.

Anne's feelings for Henry started changing when he began to court her without trying to put her in his bed. He treated her more like a person and a woman he loved than a new mistress to warm his bed. They had a beautiful courtship that was sensitive, romantic, and long.

It was fair to say that their fairy-tale love story began not at the court, but rather at Hever Castle, in Kent, where Anne was raised and spent her childhood with Mary and George. Hever was a romantic shrine to Anne and her love affair with Henry. Anne still remembered how many times the royal page came to Hever and brought to her numerous love letters in which Henry expressed his feelings for her nobly and chivalrously, writing to her numerous sensitive words and love poems. In addition, Henry often left the court for the seclusion of Hever Castle where he and Anne talked about art, literature, politics, and the problems of the kingdom, surrounded by nature.

The more time they spent together, the more interested in the King of England Anne became. Henry was so persistent and so passionate for such a long time that Anne didn't notice that she had fallen in love with him. She ignored her father and her Uncle's warnings that she shouldn't have fallen in love with Henry. She didn't think about her sister Mary's heartache when she had fallen in love with the King and was later discarded along the many other women who once were the King's mistresses.

All Anne knew was that she loved him and only him. Everything seemed to be perfect because their amorous feelings were reciprocal. As Anne realized that she had loved Henry with all her heart, she had thought that their love with him had been too deep, too sincere, too passionate, and even too obsessive at times. She had been sure that they owned each others' bodies, hearts, and souls. She had been dreaming that their love had been a feeling of a lifetime, eternal love such as the celebrated troubadours of Languedoc had glorified through the ages.

The idea of an annulment of the marriage to Catherine of Aragon was suggested to King Henry by the supporters of the Boleyns and the Howards, which was motivated by the King's desire for a male heir to secure the future of the Tudors as a ruling royal dynasty in England.

Before Henry's father King Henry VII of England ascended the throne, there was complete chaos in England for many years, a civil warfare over the claims to the throne from the House of York and the House of Lancaster. Henry desperately wanted to avoid a similar uncertainty over the succession after his death, and the Boleyns played on that.

Anne used that moment as well because she loved Henry and because she wanted to be the Queen of England. She was an ambitious and cunning woman, but it was also true that she also loved the King and didn't just fake her feelings for her own advantage and the benefits of her family. Anne and Henry assumed that an annulment could be obtained within several months, but they were mistaken.

Once Henry suggested to Catherine that she should have quietly retired to a nunnery, but she opposed him, saying that she had been the King's only true and legitimate wife and that her place was at his side. The matter of an annulment was put into the hands of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who did all he could to secure a decision in Henry's favor. However, the Pope had no intention of allowing a decision to be reached in England and ordered his legate to be recalled in England.

Months and years were passing, but no annulment or divorce happened. Catherine also had a great support of her deal from her nephew Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, which additionally made the deal more complicated by advising the Pope against an annulment.

Not hoping to receive an annulment officially from the Pope, Henry finally broke with the Catholic Church and was promulgated the Supreme Head of the Church in England. When the old Archbishop of Canterbury William Warham died, Thomas Cranmer, the supporter of the Boleyns and the Reformation in England, was appointed to the vacant position. Thomas Cranmer later annulled Henry's marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and the King was finally free to marry Anne. The deal of an annulment of Henry's marriage to Catherine became euphemistically known as the "King's Great Matter."

When King Henry and Anne met King François I of France in Calais in October 1532, they fell into temptation and made love to each other during one of the nights. When they returned to England, Anne soon discovered that she became pregnant by Henry. They were overmastered with happiness and hoped that she was carrying a son Henry desperately wished to have throughout so many years. After an annulment of his marriage to Catherine, Henry secretly married Anne.

Soon Anne was crowned the Queen of England with the silence in the streets because people hated her and pitied Catherine whom they considered to be the true Queen of England. Anne didn't bother herself that she was hated by the common people of England because she had finally gotten what she wanted after seven years of anticipation. Henry loved her and she loved him. What could have been better than she had managed to achieve? At that time Anne didn't think that she was doing something wrong because she truly believed that Henry's marriage to Catherine was null and void.

Catherine had a strong support for her cause both in England and abroad. People who supported her included Thomas More, Mary Tudor, Queen Dowager of France, Emperor Charles V, Pope Paul III, and others. The majority of English courtiers had always supported Catherine, whom King Henry wished to toss aside in favor of a younger woman whom he had courted for many years, parading her right in front of Queen Catherine and humiliating the true Queen of England, as the courtiers thought. Courtiers started to disdain Anne and blame her, even going so far as to suggest that she had bewitched Henry.

Anne still didn't understand how people could have been so naive to even think that she could have ordered the King of England to annul his marriage to Catherine if he hadn't wanted that by himself. They thought that she was a villainous woman and the only reason that Queen Catherine had been discarded and that her daughter Mary had been bastardized. People didn't wish to understand that if Henry hadn't wanted that, he would have never declared Lady Mary Tudor to be illegitimate. If Henry hadn't wanted to punish Mary for her disobedience as she hadn't wished to accept her illegitimate status and to sign the Oath, he would have never demanded from Mary to serve Elizabeth at Hatfield.

It looked like courtiers and the common people of England hated Anne for the things she couldn't have made alone because she didn't have complete control over Henry's mind and his decisions. All what Henry committed he did because he wanted to do those things and because he himself believed that his marriage to Catherine had never been valid in the eyes of God and law. The Boleyns pushed him to do many things, but Henry was the King of England and his final decision was only his, not the decision of Anne, her father, or anybody else.

However, it was Anne who was hated by the courtiers and by the common people for what they blamed her to cause, not looking into the core of the matter. But none of that mattered for Anne at that time because she loved Henry, had the King's love and was carrying his child after the visit to Calais.

When Anne gave birth to Elizabeth, Henry was disappointed with the gender of the child. Anne still remembered how Henry had come to her chambers and how frustrated he had been that Anne had given birth to a girl. Anne said that that she was sorry and Henry replied that they had been young enough to have more children. Then Henry left her chambers, and all sad thoughts faded away from her mind as soon as she looked at the small bundle in her arms – her precious daughter Elizabeth.

Anne loved her dear Elizabeth with all her heart from the first sight. For Anne, her Elizabeth was the most precious girl in the whole country, and she wouldn't have changed her dear daughter for the world. Later Anne miscarried during her second pregnancy, and Henry stopped caring for her. He couldn't bear to look at her and avoided her as much as he could, not willing to be in her presence for longer than fifteen minutes during their rare official dinners. Later Anne got pregnant again, and Henry was overjoyed that there was a chance to have a son again, although he wasn't doting on Anne like he did during her previous pregnancies. And when Anne lost her child again after she had seen Jane Seymour on Henry's lap as they were sharing a kiss in January 1536, Henry even didn't console her.

Henry started hating Anne and blaming her for everything what went wrong in his life and in his kingdom. Finally, he was easily manipulated by Anne's enemies, especially by Thomas Cromwell and probably by Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, who had always hated Anne and often sent to her way numerous looks of loathing. When the Duke of Suffolk married Catherine Willoughby, the Baroness Willoughby de Eresby, his hatred for Anne deepened tenfold. It was not a secret at the court that the Duchess of Suffolk hated and despised Anne because her mother Maria de Salinas had been a lady-in-waiting to Catherine of Aragon and remained loyal to the woman.

Anne even didn't exclude that Charles Brandon's wife had possibly told her husband to destroy her and the Boleyns whenever he had an opportunity. Anne knew that Charles Brandon had always been whispering something negative into Henry's ear to anger him against Anne. Anne didn't doubt that Suffolk had played a role in her downfall because when her influence on Henry had declined, the Suffolk's had increased. At last, the trumped-up charges were fabricated against Anne and several other courtiers, all of them had been murdered at the order of the King.

If only the question about an annulment of their marriage had ever been raised by King Henry, everything would have been different, Anne thought.

Why couldn't Henry just tell Anne that he no longer wished to have her as his wife and his Queen? She was an intelligent woman and would have gone from his life quickly and quietly, not risking her own life, the lives of so many innocent men, and not willing to leave her little Elizabeth motherless, if she had known that the King had truly wanted to get rid of her at any price. She would have agreed to an annulment by herself if she had suspected that so many innocent people would have been condemned to death and murdered because of her.

Anne would have never followed Catherine's example to fight with Henry so hard because she could have predicted the consequences if she had resisted an annulment. Henry was a man obsessed with an idea of having a male heir and would surely do everything possible and impossible to be free of Anne. The way how Henry treated Catherine proved how far he was willing to go to get what he wished, regardless of the hurt his wife and even his own child had in the process. Catherine died in poverty and loneliness at the Kimbolton Castle while her daughter served at Hatfield at Henry's order.

Anne didn't want to have her daughter Elizabeth labeled a bastard, but she would have to step aside to save their daughter from having miserable life somewhere in exile at a godforsaken manor in the English countryside and from humiliation Henry would have surely put Elizabeth through if Anne hadn't agreed to have their marriage declared null and void. Thus, Anne would have allowed to be discarded by herself, but it didn't happen because Henry wanted her to die, being murdered by her own husband for the sake of his lust for the new pretty pale face of an undereducated English country girl.

At last, Anne was so exhausted that she even noticed that she was incapable to make herself angry at Henry for what he had done to her and to their children. There were only pain, emptiness, and darkness, which surrounded her and were tearing her heart apart. She was emotionally dead inside her heart and soul, drained of almost all positive and even negative feelings.

The roller coaster of pain and depression crushed at her, like the strongest tornado, every time she remembered her arrest, her trial, the executions of her brother and of other innocent men, and her last meeting with Henry in the gardens when she begged him for mercy, but he turned away and left her.

Henry was too cruel and too atrocious to Anne. She knew that he hated her with all his heart for the fact that she had promised him to have a son and, unfortunately, had failed him. For many other people it sounded ridiculous to hate a woman just for giving birth to a healthy daughter, but it was natural for Anne who became the recipient of Henry's hatred for her after Elizabeth's birth.

Why did Anne deserve these torments? Did Henry indeed hate her so much? She had only loved him more with all her heart, while he betrayed her in the worst possible way – her bastardized their daughter and labeled her an adulteress despite her love for him and her faithfulness.

As Anne learnt about the annulment of her marriage to Henry, her attitude to Henry changed. It was the moment when Anne hated Henry the most in her life. The heavy and stinging feeling of hatred and repulsion filled her tormented heart, supplemented with tart taste of betrayal in her mouth. Hatred overtook all her essence, and the only thing she wished was to see Henry's blood, warm and red. She had no doubt that if Henry had been in the same room at that time, she would certainly have tried to kill him and then herself as she wouldn't have been able to deal with her hatred for him.

Anne regretted that she had ever loved Henry. She regretted all the years she spent with Henry. She deplored herself that she had been such a fool to think that he would love her and only her forever. She regretted that she had been waiting for him for so many years in order to be divorce Catherine and marry her, spending her youth in constant uncertainty and wasting her fertile years for nothing.

She regretted that she hadn't married Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, who was her first romantic love interest. She could have given Percy many children and be happy with him a long time ago. She could have had a normal life of an English noblewoman if she was allowed to marry Percy or somebody else. She repented that she hadn't pressed Henry Percy to secretly marry her and even run away from England in order to be together. She still remembered why her betrothal to Henry Percy had been broken, feeling that she hated her father and the King at the same time.

Anne thought that it had probably been better if she had stayed at the French court and hadn't come back to England when her father had summoned her there with the purpose to put her under the King's bedcovers. It was in France and the Low Countries where Anne learnt the ways of the courtly world and touched the greatest culture of which she had had only pale understanding before.

Anne's happiest time was in France and in the Low Countries because that time of her early youth wasn't blackened by her father's unlimited ambitions, insatiable avarice, and perverse machinations aimed at securing more wealth, power, and prestige. The days of her early youth weren't marked by Henry's brutal betrayal and the abandonment and the betrayal by her father and her Uncle – Thomas Boleyn and Thomas Howard – after her arrest. Those happy days were carefree and easygoing, and Anne wished that she had always stayed in France, thus avoiding her death on the scaffold.

The only pure thing that came out of her love for Henry was her beloved Elizabeth who would never see her mother again and would be taught that her mother had been the treasonous whore and the usurper of the throne, and her forced separation from Elizabeth infuriated Anne the most, making her hate Henry with all her heart.

Her love for Henry ended just as many fabled amorous legends had - with tragedy and with betrayal. Their love was broken into many twiggy pieces when she failed to produce a son for him, and that love had no potential to rise from ashes. Henry would never change his mind and save her before her execution, and now Anne was sure that it was so.

Anne made a mistake because their love hadn't been a fathomless, miraculous feeling of eternal love for each other. Although Anne loved Henry for many years, she gradually grew to understand that he would always love himself more than anyone else, which, coupled with his obsession to have a male heir, could have made him manically cruel in his decisions. It was exactly her case.

Anne remembered all of Henry's numerous mistresses and at last Henry's new infatuation – Lady Jane Seymour, whom he imagined to be an angel who would save him from the darkness and who became one of the reasons of Anne's final downfall. She imagined how happy the Seymours were that Anne would be executed by burning, opening Henry and Jane the road to their marriage.

Now, when her minutes were counted and she would soon depart to another word, Anne hated Jane with all her heart, with deeper hatred than she had ever felt for the woman whom Henry was openly courting and who would eventually become his next wife. She hated Jane so much that she wished her be executed instead of herself. She couldn't have felt otherwise at those agonizing time.

On the threshold of her death, Anne was ready to laugh at herself because she once told her brother George that Lady Mary Tudor had been her death and that she had been Mary's death. She was mistaken that she said that – Jane Seymour was Anne's death.

Anne was ready to scream in pain and in anger because she hated and despised Jane Seymour with all her heart. She hated her because Jane was such an angel in Henry's eyes and she, _his_ Anne, was a demoness and a witch. But what an angel would be sitting on the knees of other woman's husband, even the King's knees, when his wife of that man was carrying his child? Anne couldn't forget how Henry paraded around the court on the arm of Jane Seymour when Anne was expecting their last child whom she lost only because of Jane Seymour.

Anne was convinced that Jane was born to be a country matron running her household somewhere in the countryside, but not the Queen of England. The idea that Jane Seymour would be the Queen of England after Anne was executed was repugnant. Anne lost Henry's love, and the mousy country girl Jane Seymour won. Finally, Anne lost everything, even her chance for survival. Her deep love for Henry resulted in the complete crash of the Boleyn family and Anne and George's deaths.

Anne still didn't understand how she could have been so foolish not to see so many intrigues around her. She had to get rid of Jane Seymour earlier, but she was too blinded by her love for Henry and as a result she lost in the whole game. She didn't take into account that if the King had truly wanted to be free of her, he would anyway have found a way to do that.

She knew that Jane Seymour had an oversimplified mind and was very undereducated as compared to Anne herself, but she also knew that the Seymours were an ambitious, crafty family, not less cunning than the Boleyns. Anne underestimated her rivals – the Seymours who had undoubtedly instructed Jane what to do and how to attract the King to her personality. She underestimated them, and it was her fatal mistake. As a result, the Seymour faction was in the ascendancy at the court, while the Boleyns were in shatters.

It was her last night, and Anne was going to die. She was planning her execution speech, imagining how she would ascent the steps of the scaffold and how the executioner would chop her off by the French cold steel. She was sure that she would find eternal peace after her death, together with her beloved brother George and her other innocently executed friends.

She began to pray for the safety of Elizabeth from Henry's wrath and for the repose of the souls of the executed and unjustly condemned men, including her dear brother George. She didn't want to die, leaving her dear little Elizabeth motherless in such a young age, but it was her fate and she was powerless to prevent that. She also knew that Henry would be highly unlikely to favor Elizabeth and as a result the child would be alone in the whole world. God, please help my dear Elizabeth, she prayed. She loved her dear daughter so much because she was one of the few joys in her life.

As she was praying, her heart was more and more paralyzed with pain and cold and fear. She was ready to accept her death, but in reality she didn't want to die. Yet, she was condemned to death, and there was no other way to avoid it, she mused. Then she would die as an innocent traitor and would go directly to Heaven, for God would surely forgive her for all her sins in the light of Henry's cruelty and unfair, monstrous, even if ludicrous, charges brought against her by Henry's councilors.

Anne Boleyn was doomed to die. But even if everyone wanted her dead, she would die with her head high, her eyes cold, her expression calm and resigned. She would die with dignity, showing all her enemies all her strength and will power even in her death. And whatever Henry and all her enemies did to her, Anne wasn't broken, for her spirit and her will were not broken, and the truth was at her side.


End file.
